and even the rickety and half-revolutionised monarchy of Spain has
survived the shock, and the streets of Madrid have witnessed the
overthrow of a power which the arms of France proved unable to combat.
The worst, therefore, is over, considering the convulsion as one
affecting the internal government and social concerns of nations. The
wild-beast has made his spring: he has cruelly lacerated some of the
party, but many have repelled his claws, and against others he has
missed his blow. But, even more than that, we derive consolation from
this reflection, that the force of the cosmopolitan and general
transports has been weakened, and they are rapidly turning into their
ordinary and comparatively regulated evils of war, conquest, and
military devastation. The polyglot fervour, for the present at least,
is stilled: the national are fast resuming the ascendency over the
social passions. Prussia is at open war with Denmark, in the hope of
wresting from it the German possessions of the Danish crown: Piedmont,
Tuscany, and Lombardy are combating Austria on the Adige: Naples has
declared war against Sicily, and Russia is only waiting till its
gigantic strength is collected in Poland to crush the efforts of
revolution in the Grand-duchy of Warsaw and Duchy of Posen. Thus
revolution is leading every where to its natural and oft predicted
result of universal hostility. The robbery of the weak by the strong,
as in a nation where the authority of law is at an end, has become
general. Spoliation is the order of the day. Nation is rising up
against nation--people against people; civil war has already broken
out in many parts of France--in others it is threatened: Paris is
openly preparing for the conflict: and the reign of liberty, equality,
and _fraternity_ in France is, to all appearance, about to deluge the
world with a stream of blood; second, perhaps, only to that which
followed and punished the first revolution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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